ST. BREOGWINE
integrity and great learning. He prevailed upon the Chapter of Christ Church to elect him and he therefore became the twelfth Archbishop of Canterbury. He was consecrated on Michaelmas Day, 759, and "ascended the pontifical chair to rule this Church of God amidst the exultations of all." Ethelbert II had recognized the humility, discretion and consistency of life of the new Archbishop, as well as his great theological learning, but he died during the second year of Breogwine's archiepiscopate, and according to Edmer the Archbishop himself died the following year. There is some confusion of dates here; most historians agree that the correct date of the death of the Archbishop is four years later, viz., in 765. This is the date given by Stubbs[1] and is probably the correct one, as the Archbishop is known to have signed Charters as late as 764.
Breogwine's episcopate was absolutely and entirely uneventful. There is a mention some thirty years after his death of his having held a Synod at which complaint was made that certain land which had been granted by Ethelbald of Mercia to Christ Church had been unjustly withheld.
We have already told the story, in Chapter III, of the way in which the clergy of Christ Church outwitted the monks of St. Austin's, on the death of Breogwine (see page 28); and how, when the armed party from St. Austin's, headed by the Abbot himself, came to claim his body, they found that the Archbishop was already buried in the Church of St. John, at the east end of the Cathedral, near the body of his predecessor, Cuthbert. "His tomb was flat, of decent workmanship and a little raised above the pavement." But yet another attempt was made to abstract this saint's body from the Cathedral, though not by the Augustinians. It will be best to tell the story here, though it relates to a time 350 years afterwards—it is given at length in Edmer's "Life."
"Not long before the death of Archbishop Ralph (1114-1123) a certain Teutonic monk, named Lambert, came into England from Louvain under the patronage of the Queen of Henry I, Adelaide by name, who also belonged to that city. Lambert was staying in Canterbury, residing with the fraternity of Christ
- ↑ Stubbs, Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum, 1897.
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